Do L2 researchers care about L2 teaching?

The issues related to the divide between L2 research and L2 teaching have been reported in recent studies (Marsden & Kasprowicz, 2017; Sato & Loewen, 2018). However, research has focused on teachers as though it is their responsibility to facilitate the research-pedagogy dialogue. The current study focused on researchers, instead, based on a premise that the dialogue requires both sides approaching each other. In the current survey study, 1013 L2 researchers, whose names appeared as the first authors at five major international conferences in the past five years (2013-2018), were initially contacted. Among them, 184 respondents completed the survey. The sample consisted of researchers who were from 23 countries with 31 different L1 backgrounds (54% were L1-English speakers). While the majority of them were tenured/tenure-track professors (56%), others identified themselves as academic advisers (33%), temporary research appointees (7%), and doctoral students (4%). They were experienced researchers (M = 16.46 years; SD = 9.59) and had produced one or more publications from journals indexed by Web of Science Group (Clarivate) in the past 10 years, totaling 522 papers (M = 2.84 per researcher). The survey elicited the perceptions of (a) the usefulness of research in the L2 classroom, (b) researchers’ effort in disseminating their research, and (c) facilitators/obstacles of the research-pedagogy dialogue. Various exploratory analyses were conducted via multi-level regression modellings. Descriptive statistics showed that only 7 (4%) of the researchers had not taught an L2 with an average of 13.67 years (SD = 9.72) of experience, suggesting that the divide between researchers and teachers may not be as clear-cut some claim. The regression models showed that teaching experience predicted a favorable view of communicating with teachers and conducing classroom-based research. However, the lack of time and institutional rewards prevented them from engaging with teachers, overall.